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Progressive Party (RSA-SWM)
|student_wing = |youth_wing = National Union of Liberal Youth (NULY) |membership_year = |membership = |ideology = Anti- |religion = |colors = |seats1_title = Seats in the House of Assembly |seats1 = |seats2_title = |seats2 = |seats3_title = |seats3 = |website = |country = |country_dab1 = }}The Progressive Party (Afrikaans: Progressiewe Party) is a political party as well as the Official Opposition in the House of Assembly of the Parliament of South Africa. It has been the Official Opposition since the 1995 general election. The Progressive Party was formed on 21 July 1994Alistair, S. "Democrats, Federalists and moderate Nats finally merge" (22 July 1995). . as a result of a merger between the Democratic Party, the Federal Party and moderate members of the formerly-ruling National Party. The current Federal Executive Director is James Roberts MP. The party currently holds 56 seats in the House of Assembly, which is the house reserved for the white electorate. It does not contest elections in the other houses of Parliament and thus only relies on the white - mostly English - vote. The Progressives however do maintain domestic alliances with several small Indian and colored political organizations as well as foreign alliances with parties represented in some of the black homelands. The party's establishment was in reaction to what the various pre-merger groups described as a palace coup d'etat by the Conservative Party, after that party unexpectedly and undemocratically came to power when most of the National Party government was arrested on charges ranging from treason to corruption.Jobbs, D. "Democrats decry arrest of key Nationalists: A subversion of South Africa's fragile democracy" (27 February 1995). . The Progressive Party maintains to this day that the Conservative Party, which has ruled South Africa since 1995, illegally averted the democratization of South Africa, especially with reference to its declaration of nullity of the Constitution of 1993 which paved the way for a multiracial, inclusive South Africa. On that note, the Progressive Party maintains that the Conservative Party and the prevailing constitutional dispensation of South Africa is illegitimate.Progressive Party website. "Statement of Policy: The Constitutional Order". http://www.progressives.org.za. Accessed: 12 January 2011. Over the years, many have argued that this would inevitably lead to the Progressive Party becoming a banned organization under South Africa's security legislation. However, due to the vast influence the party wields among the country's wealthy English elite, some regard the Progressives as safe in that regard. The Progressive Party has a modern liberal platform. It opposes the government program of Separate Development (known more commonly as "Apartheid") and believes in a democratic, unified, multiracial and multicultural South Africa. It thus opposes the legitimacy of the homelands (the various "independent" states which Parliament created by way of legislation for black ethnic groups) and campaigns for their reincorporation into "white" South Africa. Its domestic platform includes support for wide ranging civil liberties such as freedom of speech, association and worship and support for social welfare programs. It mostly favors a market-driven economy, however believes that "400 years of coercively-imposed white supremacy"Progressive Party website. "Statement of Policy: The Market Economy". http://www.progressives.org.za. Accessed: 12 January 2011. has distorted any legitimate market outcomes and thus favors programs specifically designed to bring about economic equality between the racial groups. See also *Multicameral Parliament * References Category:RSA-SWM